Nightmare Day at Oberlin, Issue 14: A Love Letter to Oberlin Ohio

by Zoe Brunk, Staff Writer

Illustration by Sylvia Cottrell, Contributor

This summer, I bought a perfect emerald green sweater for $1. It was so good and so cheap that it felt like the world was playing a trick on me. I was having a dream that I was wearing my green sweater and going through a haunted house. Somewhere along the way, I realized my sweater was gone. This jolted me out of my sleep. Still lying in my bed, I scoured my closet for green. Nothing! I sat up in my covers, thinking through every place it could be, when I noticed a large ink stain on my pillow that hadn’t been there yesterday. The culprit pen was lying next to me.

I went to the bathroom mirror and saw a sizable circle of ink reflected on my cheek. Then, my phone buzzed. I went back across the hall to my bed, trying to ignore the large, ugly stain, and picked up my phone, which for some reason hadn’t charged overnight and was at 4%. I plugged it in and decided to take a shower. The ink was slowly washing off, black running down my face. Just as I put shampoo in my hair, the lights went out, and it was pitch black. I quickly rinsed the soap out of my hair and found my way back to my room, rushing to get dressed. I used my flashlight and thought I could still see remnants of ink on my face, but I had to go to class.

I was the last to walk in and took a seat next to a random girl. My class was a creative writing seminar, and she, it turns out, had brought in dystopian smut for me to edit. I was disturbed by her writing and unsure what to do. Throughout the class, I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that my face could still have an ink stain. After class, I was walking through Tappan to get to lunch at Tank when I saw a group of musical theater students led by President Amber running through the archway. They were dancing, and I swear one of the cameras caught me in the background. Then, one of the girls with Ambar yelled out, “Come dance!” Oh no. I walked a little faster, and then I heard footsteps. I looked behind me, and a herd of musical theater students were chasing me. “DANCE.” Ambar yelled, “I know who you are!” I ran all the way to Tank and finally lost them.

When I got there, hot and out of breath, Tank felt awfully quiet. I investigated and realized that lunch was cancelled. I had missed the email. I was feeling lost and confused, and then decided to meet some friends at Kim’s. I had just received my Kimchi lunch stew, so things were looking up, but as I was getting ready to eat, I saw my ex-hookup heading towards me. I was so perturbed that I opened up my plastic bag with my soup a little too forcefully, and it went flying all over my friend’s white outfit, head-to-toe. It was so hot that her ear began to blister. He cringed and did a 360, and the smell of kimchi was overpowering. My friend, wet with soup, had to go shower. Still hungry and now going without lunch, all I wanted to do was go back to Woodlands and lie in bed, but I decided I should do the right thing and go put her lunch in the Tank fridge for her. Just as I was stepping inside, campus safety came out and said there was a fire drill, and I couldn’t go inside for half an hour, just waiting on Tank’s porch. Some people were playing hacky sack outside and, within a few minutes, it hit me square in the head, and they all burst into laughter.

When I left Woodlands again, it was dinner time. Walking over, I received the dinner menu with a warning at the top that said all of the rice for dinner had been burnt. I turned around and went to Hark instead, but when the head cook was announcing the meal, he said that his Band-Aid had fallen off in the chickpea curry and was still somewhere in there, soaking.